


Remus Lupin and the Computational Error: The Well of Lost Plots

by pisoprano



Series: Remus Lupin and the Computational Error: Early Chapter Postings [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2906012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pisoprano/pseuds/pisoprano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wait, what is Chapter 3 doing over here?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remus Lupin and the Computational Error: The Well of Lost Plots

**Author's Note:**

> Several elements of this chapter come from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, but it is not necessary to read that to understand what is happening here--but it might help.

DISCLAIMER: All levels of this story are fictional. Any real people are not intended to be accurate depictions. And JK Rowling still doesn't know that this story exists. And neither does Jasper Fforde or any other professional authors, editors, etc.

* * *

"After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer—perhaps more."

The Well of Lost Plots

* * *

"Where am I?" He felt like he was in a void, but there wasn't the utter black of nothingness around him, nor was there some blinding light. It was like...he  _couldn't_ take in anything about his surroundings.

"Welcome to the Well of Lost Plots," a voice said.

"The what?" he asked.

"I know the name makes no sense," the voice replied. "Someone stole it from someone's missing sock pile and it managed to stick. Basically, this is where things go when their existence is not fully realized. It's not death, exactly, but good luck getting back to your world."

"Who are you?"

"I used to be Lysander Scamander," the voice said, and as he said it, his body began to appear before him, looking like Old George's subliminal memory. "Now I'm nobody. Who were you?"

"Remus Lupin."

"You had a twin?" Lysander asked. "Huh, never would have guessed that one. Does the fact that George hasn't showed up mean he was successful?"

Remus shrugged. "Probably."

"He made it through the first year, right?"

"He did," Remus confirmed. "He did most of what needed to be done to defeat Voldemort when I left, but I wanted to leave as soon as I was able, just in case George accidentally died or something and I was stuck there."

"How long did you last then?" Lysander asked.

"From March until the end of July."

"End of July..." Lysander was getting a strange look on his face. "When  _exactly_  in July?"

"The 31st," Remus replied.

Lysander got a strange grin on his face. "That either means that one of the theories floating around here us wrong, or you just might be able to convince your version of the universe that you were unjustly deported. Either way, we've learned something!"

"Come again?"

"Some people here believe that a year is not actually what finalizes existence for us time travelers," Lysander explained, "but others believe that it's actually the passing between a certain time in June or July—it varies from year to year when exactly it is, but that if you get to Harry Potter's birthday, then you should be in the new year's cycle."

"Why would it be Harry Potter's birthday?" Remus asked.

Lysander looked at him like he was crazy. "Haven't you realized that he's the reason that anything exists?"

"Harry Potter is  _not_  a god," Remus said flatly.

"No," Lysander allowed, "but our creator made him first, and built out entire universe around him conquering challenges. It is quite surprising that George actually managed to modify anything so close to the Meridian of Time."

"The Meridian of Time?" Remus repeated. Lysander was starting to sound like either a novelist or a scholar who made up terms to make his field sound more important than it was. Remus vastly preferred nonfiction or texts with practical value, not made up codswallop. But Remus decided to remain polite and allow for the possibility that Lysander was right. Stranger things had happened, after all.

"There are debates on when exactly it is," Lysander explained, "but the most popular candidates for the Meridian are Halloween 1981, sometime in late 1991 or early 1992, June 1995, or May 1998. Notice anything interesting?"

"Do you think that those are your Meridians because you know stories about Harry Potter or because you have actual facts to back them up?"

"The stories and facts are intertwined," Lysander replied as if it was the most self-evident thing in the world. "Just look at Harry: he had more luck in seven years than any twenty other complete lives combined. At 15 months, he got his first universally known title: the Boy-Who-Lived. Years before he even did what he would become most famous for, people recognized that he was the Chosen One. He defeated Voldemort by being lucky enough to get the allegiance of the Elder Wand without even touching it, not to mention all the other cases of him just  _happening_ to be at the right place and right time with the right people all for helping him out for no particular reason yet end up being crucial for his success. Here in the Well there's a word for someone like that: ta'veren."

"And how many of these 'ta'veren' have there been?"

"In our multiverse?" Lysander asked. "Just Harry, though there's the occasional theorist that argues that Hermione, Ron, or sometimes even Snape were lesser ta'veren. In the other multiverses, however, things are completely different."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the multiverse supposed to contain everything?"

"Our multiverse contains everything derived from one creator—though very rarely something by some fellow named Galbraith creeps in," Lysander added. "It contains hundreds of thousands of defined alternate universes (and infinite undefined ones) containing every small and large change anyone could possibly think of. Other creators have their own sets of multiverses, but few can rival the variations on the original JK-verse."

Remus was still confused. He still had no idea if what Lysander was saying would be in any way helpful to him, but it was obvious that he was out of his depth in the Well of Lost Plots. "So are we inside of our multiverse or aren't we?"

"That is a very difficult question to answer," Lysander sighed. "This place is an area where many multiverses collide together—a metaverse, if you will. If each multiverse is like a balloon and they all make contact with one another, the shared surface is where we exist."

"Huh?"

"Sorry, that metaphor is actually meant for the interaction of universes within a multiverse about how there is no 'core idea' of something, just surface commonalities, but I'm sure the adaptation theorist I stole it from won't mind. Much."

"Is  _everyone_ here a theorist?" Remus asked.

"More or less," Lysander said. "It's not like we have much else to do. Unlike our previous universes, there is nothing driving time forward, we just exist forever here so that we don't muck up things elsewhere."

"Except maybe me," Remus said. He had gotten lost in Lysander's talk and almost lost sight of the entire point: that Remus  _might_ be able to go back to where he was. "How exactly do I get out of this place, if whoever it was is right?"

"Well, you just need to go talk to the Editor of the JK-verse, of course. Tell him he booted you unfairly and he might agree to send you back. You might want to have someone come with you to appeal on your behalf, though."

"Are you volunteering?" Remus asked, hoping he'd say no. Even if Lysander  _did_  have an accurate view of the Well, he had a tendency to digress and Remus had a feeling that Lysander could digress forever if given the opportunity.

"If you really want me to, sure," Lysander shrugged, "but I'd rather you take an actual writer with you instead of a mere theorist like me. Writers can convince editors to bend the rules like no other."

Remus started thinking about the author of  _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_  and wondered if they might exist in this Well of Lost Plots place—he'd always wanted to meet them, after all, and this might be an ideal place to do so. "Can I just summon the author of a book I've read or do I have to find someone in particular?"

"Maybe," Lysander said, "but—"

"You summoned me?" a new voice said.

"Are you the author of  _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_?" Remus asked.

"I am," the new voice replied, but no distinct body appeared.

Remus had hoped that he'd finally be able to put a face with that voice, but then he realized that it might not happen: Remus had only seen Lysander after knowing who he was and his appearance conformed to the picture he'd gotten from Old George's memories, down to the robes he was wearing. The author, however, had no face for Remus to give him, so it'd likely remain a disembodied voice.

"What are you doing here?" Lysander asked.

"The creator did not put much thought into me," the author said. "I am my book and little else. The rest of my potential to be a person wound up here."

"Ah, a Grade-D Generic," Lysander nodded. For Remus' benefit, he added, "a Grade-D Generic is someone who was explicitly created but has little detail. They both do and do not exist here in a cat-paradox kind of way. I'm actually a Grade-D Generic as well, or at least part of me is—I had to be reintegrated with my time-traveling self when I got sent to the Well. That me was  _much_  more interesting—Grade-B at least."

"Not that this isn't  _fascinating_ ," Remus said sarcastically, "but this author and I have to go make an appeal to the editor of the JK-verse. Just tell me how to get there, and we can be off."

"Without even saying goodbye?" Lysander asked.

"Goodbye," Remus said.

"You are  _horrible_  at goodbyes," Lysander said as he gave Remus a hug, which he returned awkwardly. He wasn't really used to people actually touching him. " _That's_  how you say goodbye. Now, author of  _Hairy Heart, Human Snout_ , take him to the Outlands. You're looking for the editor named Blair. Good luck!"

"It's ' _Hairy Snout, Human Heart,_ '" the author corrected as Lysander faded from Remus' view and actual surroundings began to appear, in the form of a man tinkering with a complicated looking machine.

"Is this guy Blair or are we going to have to look around more?" Remus asked.

"That's just the professor, we haven't even gotten to the Outlands yet," the author replied. "To do that, we use the Large Textual Sieve Array. A word of warning: it will hurt."

It  _did_  hurt, quite a bit. Apparently displacing Remus to the Well was easy for the editor to do, and thus could be an instantaneous process. Moving from the Outlands into the Well was more uncomfortable, but mostly of a mental sort. Going from the Well to the Outlands, however, was something blatantly unnatural, and doing so without a creator's intervention would always be extremely difficult and painful, but nevertheless possible.

Once Remus got through the experience of being shot through a magic particle cannon—and the subsequent sensory overload of being bombarded with the rich world that was the Outlands—the author hurried him along. "We only have 24 hours before we get automatically pulled back to the Well."

Following someone Remus  _still_  couldn't actually see was strange, but somehow the two managed to end up at Blair's office without incident. Or at the reception room to the office, at least. The author quickly informed the receptionist of what they were there for and she invited the two of them to sit and wait while she let Blair know about his visitors.

"Have you been here before?" Remus asked as they sat down. "You seem to know your way around."

"I tried to appeal to the editor to get a bit more backstory," the author replied, "but Blair just told me that all sorts of Grade-D Generics had similar problems and told me to try to get a substandard creator to fill me out. Tried that a couple times, but all I ended up being a version of you."

"Me?" Remus asked. "But I was 15 at the time. As much as I like books, I doubt I could write something publishable at that age—or even now, really. Although I did try to recreate your book and publish it in 1960. Sorry."

"No worries—I published it anonymously for a reason."

"What's your name?" Remus asked.

But—like the multiverse was announcing its displeasure at that question  _ever_ getting an answer—the receptionist told Remus that Mr. Blair was ready to see them.

* * *

"Hello, Remus, may I say it is a pleasure to meet you," a man wearing glasses—obviously Blair—said. "You always were one of Jo's favorites."

"Um, thanks?" Remus replied as he shook Blair's hand. "I'm here to get back to the universe I was just talking to Dumbledore in."

Blair frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't do that."

"I got pulled on 31 July," Remus said. "I already became part of the universe by then, or was Lysander wrong about that?"

Blair sighed. "The situation is more complicated than that. Yes, you were already within the new year cycle—it seems that the people who first made your memory book estimated high for safety reasons—but an interloper altered history to get you there."

"Meaning?" Remus asked.

"Your creator has explicitly stated that you never had any siblings," Blair replied. "Her exact words were these: 'Remus Lupin was the only child of the wizard Lyall Lupin and his Muggle wife Hope Howell.'"

Remus frowned. "I talked to the healer who brought me into the world, and he was quite sure Romulus existed. Merlin, I even helped Romulus stay alive!"

"That healer and your twin were created by the interloper," Blair said. "Not Jo. I suspect the interloper has altered history more than a few times to allow time travel to travel, but they should have been more careful while working in highly defined time. Explicit canon trumps all."

"But how explicit is this case?" the author interrupted. "You have 'was an only child,' not 'was the only child ever born.' Remus certainly was  _raised_  as an only child, but does that mean that Lyall and Hope never had a failed pregnancy, or a child die nearly instantly, or even that their other child was raised by someone else?"

"It's obvious what Jo meant," Blair said.

"Maybe," the author allowed, "but that would be  _implicit_ canon, not  _explicit_ canon. Remus has a loophole to get back to that timeline."

"I am here to protect the authorial intention of Jo's universe!" Blair insisted. "I can't let you change it just because you want to. Go get your interloper to make an alternate universe if you want it, but leave my domain alone."

"You have over 450 million official copies of the universe," the author pointed out. "Can't we be allowed to deface  _one_ of them? It's already defaced anyway, so we might as well let Remus add more changes."

"Why isn't having an interloper making an alternate universe okay?" Remus asked. "Wasn't I already in one?"

"Not exactly, at least by our terminology," the author replied. "You were in a  _parallel_  universe within a defaced copy of the universe—which is  _not_ an  _alternate_  universe. Spectators view alternate universes and consider them possibilities not taken, that never could have been. However, when they see an official copy of the original—even if 'defaced'—they recognize it as how events were meant to be, and that copy  _can_ be splintered into different parallel universes. There are a few alternate universes that become 'real' on a small scale—something we call 'head canon'—but what you are doing is extremely difficult to actualize unless you were somehow part of the original in the first place."

"So, in essence," Remus said, "you are trying to preserve my 'realness', is that correct?"

"Yes," the author said. "Along with the universe you were recently attached to."

"But what if I was never a legitimate existence in the first place?" Remus asked. "That I've been imaginary this whole time?"

"Of course you're imaginary," the author said. "We all are, from the creator's perspective—except Blair here. Sort of. Blair is an imaginary copy of one of the creator's friends, since the imaginary cannot directly interact with those on the creator's plane of existence. But that's not important. For our purposes, you must have been 'real' in the sense of being 'canon,' because otherwise we wouldn't be having problems with Blair now. He only deals with the defacing of original copies of the JK-verse."

"But if this Blair isn't the real Blair, he might not have any real power except in the alternate universe that George, Lysander, and the rest of us time-traveled in. He might not have anything to do with the 'official copies,' at all, he just thinks he does."

There was a long pause.

"I sure hope that's not true," the author said. "Otherwise this whole debate is pointless."

"I am certainly not pointless," Blair put in.

"Oh yeah, you exist," the author said as he turned back to Blair. "Maybe. Anyway, you should let Remus go back to his universe. If none of us have anything to do with the original JK-verse, then you aren't hurting any universes by letting him go back. And if you really have the job you think you do, you have let one measly copy be affected. I'm certain you've had copies defaced before and you never worried about those."

"Fine, you win," Blair sighed.

"So I'm going back?" Remus asked.

Blair nodded. And with that, Remus winked back into existence.


End file.
